religions
ArticleThe Orthodox Church, Neosecularisation, and the Rise of
Anti-Gender Politics in Bulgaria
Ina Merdjanova
Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College, University of Dublin, D02 PN40 Dublin, Ireland; merdjand@tcd.ie

Abstract: In a recent publication, I introduced the theoretical framework of neosecularisation withregard to the Orthodox Church and society in Bulgaria. I argued that neosecularisation, as a complex
process of decline of religion’s importance and the hold of religious authority over the social system,
while genealogically different from communist secularisation, explicates patterns of continuity withthe communist past. Important aspects of this continuity include the persistent grassroots feminisationof the Church and the co-optation of the Church by the state. Drawing on those theoretical insights, inthis paper, I seek to understand the rise of anti-gender politics in Bulgaria since 2018 in relation to thecondition of neosecularisation and its impact on the Church. I argue that (neo)secularisation remains
a much feared “threat” for the Church and plays a role in ecclesiastical anti-gender mobilisation.
However, the Church is not a major factor in anti-gender politics in Bulgaria; the roles of far-rightnationalists and certain transnationally connected evangelical actors are to be seriously considered.
Furthermore, anti-genderism cannot be understood merely as a religious or cultural backlash. It
needs to be discussed as a larger protest movement against liberal democracy’s failure to live up to its
promises and against the pathologies of neoliberal globalisation, a movement in which the Orthodox
Church is only tangentially involved.
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Keywords: Orthodox Church; Bulgaria; secularisation; anti-gender politics

Citation: Merdjanova, Ina. 2022. The
Orthodox Church, Neosecularisation,and the Rise of Anti-Gender Politics

1. Introduction

in Bulgaria. Religions 13: 359.

The grand narrative of religion in post-1989 Bulgaria emphasises that the newly established freedom of religion brought the revival and rehabilitation of Orthodox Christianity
after four decades of oppression and marginalisation. It assumes that the communist secularisation has been reversed, whereby religion has emancipated itself from state tutelage
and has restored its moral authority in society. This dominant explanatory framework
focuses on a complete break with the totalitarian past and on a profound, multi-faceted
transformation of the state and society, including the reshaping of church–state relations.
I argue that the emphasis on a radical discontinuity creates a distorted picture andhinders the understanding of the various ways in which past realities re-emerge in seemingly new configurations at the intersection of religion and the state. Heeding to Faulkner’s
famed observation (Faulkner 1975, p. 88), “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,”
I suggest that we should beware of traces of continuities with certain experiences andrealities from the communist past. In an earlier book of mine, I described the condition of
post-communism in relation to religion and nationalism as a “palimpsest.” In its figurative
sense, “palimpsest” signifies something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of
its earlier writing, and I believe this metaphor fittingly points to the ambiguities and thevarious ways through which the communist past has continued to define and shape thepresent, including with regard to secularisation (see Merdjanova 2002, p. xi).
Secularisation1 in this paper is interpreted as a process of social modernisation which
renders the secular spheres (the modern state, the capitalist market economy and modern
science) functionally differentiated and emancipated from the religious sphere (cf. Casanova
2006, p. 12), and by which religion “ceases to be significant in the working of the social

https://doi.org/10.3390/
rel13040359
Academic Editor: John Jillions
Received: 17 March 2022
Accepted: 7 April 2022
Published: 13 April 2022
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Religions 2022, 13, 359

2 of 12system” (Wilson 1982, p. 150). In a secularised world, religion is no longer the unifying
system of meaning and ethical norms, or what Peter Berger called the “sacred canopy” ofsociety (Berger 1967); it becomes one sphere among multiple other spheres of a differentiated social reality. The decline of religion as a meaning-organising system, which permeatesand influences all spheres of life, often leads to religion’s aligning with political and othersecular forces, through which it seeks to regain its social impact. It “lends” its symbolic
capital and functions to worldly ideologies and systems of social organisation, such as
various political movements among which nationalism figures prominently2 . Neosecularisation3 , in turn, is a complex process wherein after a period of desecularisation and arise of religious authority at individual, social, and/or political levels, the significance ofreligion decreases, and the hold of religious authority over the social system declines (seeChaves 1994). A neosecular society does not mean a complete lack of religious beliefs andpractices and/or religious institutions not interfering in the public domain; it rather meansa limited impact of religion and its prescriptions on people’s individual and collective lives.
This is particularly evident in relation to church-endorsed norms about sexuality, abortion,and divorce, which the society at large see either as negotiable or outrightly neglectable.
In short, neo/secularisation here refers to a sociological description of specific processes in specific contexts related to the decline of religious authority, belonging, belief, andpractice, as well as to the privatisation of religion (Casanova 1994). To my mind, instancesof religion’s resurgence post-1989 must be analysed contextually before pronouncing thema “reversal of secularisation.” I want to particularly challenge the framework of “postsecularity” which gained certain tour de force in recent decades and which has been widelyand indiscriminately deployed. It seems relevant to ask if there is a “postsecular turn”
indeed, or, rather, if scholars started paying more attention to the public role of religion
due to specific factors and experiences since the early 1990s. Certainly, the reinstatementof religion in Eastern Europe, and the massive Muslim immigration to Europe and theconsequent visibility of Islam, including through a number of terror attacks in Western
Europe, among others, have influenced the ways we perceive the world. In his illuminating discussion of the post-secular, James Beckford noted that the term was first used by
Catholic theologians Andrew Creely in 1966 and Richard Neuhaus in 1982 in reference
to the situation in the U.S. He identified different meanings of the post-secular such as
denial of secularisation, re-enchantment of culture and public resurgence of religion, among
others. He argued that the visibility of religion in Britain’s public space does not makethe country post-secular in any of those meanings of the term, but is instead associatedwith the state’s “interpellation” of selected religions as partners in the delivery of public
policies for managing diversity, combating inequality and promoting social enterprise. His
conclusion that the notion is problematic and irrelevant in explaining public religions in
Britain (Beckford 2012) seems pertinent well beyond the British context. Clearly, the theoryof post-secularity provides an example of the epistemic and political power of academic
discourses to impose interpretations of reality which then become frameworks throughwhich this reality is perceived.
For those reasons, and also because post-secularisation implies the linearity of a process which is neither linear nor inevitable, I prefer to speak of desecularisation instead of
post-secularisation when discussing periods of increased public presence of religion in thewake of 1989. Indeed, in the case of Bulgaria, it did not take long for the desecularisation of
the 1990s to be reversed. Secularism and secularisation are here to stay, and we need tofocus on the rethinking and redefinition of religion’s relations with the secular in a way thattakes into consideration the realities on the ground rather than give in to abstract theories
of an imagined post-secular turn. Furthermore, we should beware of sharp disassociations of the religious and the secular, whether we choose to speak of neo-secularisation,or, with David Martin, of “a dialectic of the religious and the secular that more easily
generates secular mutations of faith than straightforward replacements and displacements”(Martin 2006, p. 68), or, with Daniele Hervieu-Leger, of “religion as a chain of memory”(Hervieu-Leger 2000).

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2. Bulgarian Orthodox Church and Neosecularisation
The collapse of the communist regime in Bulgaria in 1989 reversed the forced policies
of secularisation in which the marginalisation and full co-optation of the Church by thestate as well as the atheistic upbringing of citizens had been seen as integral to society’s
modernisation. The communist state had abolished religious education, confiscated church
property, persecuted the clergy and banned faith-based activities. Religious rituals suchas baptism, church weddings and religious funerals had been replaced by socialist (called“civil”) rites of passage. The mandatory women’s access to education and the labour
market, in addition to generous family-friendly social services and women’s control overtheir reproductive lives, had buttressed women’s emancipation and rearranged inherited
patriarchal orders. At the same time, the communist secularisation had inadvertently
supported the feminisation of Orthodox Christianity since the crackdown on the Church
and the domestication of religion had turned elderly women into custodians of religiosity
who secretly performed religious rituals at home and had their grandchildren baptised (seeMerdjanova 2021, p. 59).
The newly established freedom of religion and the emergence of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church from years of oppression generated expectations for a religious revival
and mass return to Orthodox Christianity. Indeed, the 1990s were marked by incipient
desecularisation in the sense of the Church’s growing social standing and public presence. The Church reopened its administrative, spiritual and educational structures. People
flocked to it, seeking spiritual and moral guidance in a time of rapid and far-reachingeconomic, political and social transformation. The Church, however, failed to respond topeople’s demands and to retain their trust. The clergymen squabbled and split, aligningthemselves behind two rival Synods, while the ecclesiastical leaders refused to repent for
their cooperation with the secret services of the communist regime.
The 1991 Constitution reaffirmed the separation of church and state, but opted for an
accommodationist approach by defining Orthodox Christianity as the nation’s “traditionalreligion.” Despite the constitutional separation, however, the state has continued to interfere
in church affairs in sometimes contradictory ways: in the 1990s, for example, it registered asecond Synod, and in 2004, it outlawed this Synod.
The church–state relations today resemble certain aspects of their communist-time
configuration when the state co-opted, controlled and exploited the Church for its own
political goals, e.g., to flaunt a non-existing religious freedom in Bulgaria at international
forums such as the World Council of Churches, or to use the Orthodox link in order tobring the country closer to the “brotherly” Soviet Russia. In 2018, the Bulgarian Parliament
adopted an amendment to the Act on Religious Denominations, and significantly increased
the public subsidies for the Orthodox Church and the Islamic Community. Consequently,
the state started to pay the clergy’s salaries and allocated a larger budget for the upkeepof religious buildings. This has generated, in the words of Atanas Slavov, an expert on
church–state relations, “a hazardous symbiosis between the Church and the state . . . The
symphony between the two is an imperial vision of the state seeking to use the Church.” A
dissenting cleric described the overfunding of the Church as a “temptation” and “use of
the Church like a jewelry on the state’s lapel.”4
The Church, seeking to boost its diminishing authority, re-emphasised its role asa “guardian” of national identity at the expense of its universal spiritual mission. This
ecclesial linkage with the mundane agenda of nationalism can be read as another sign ofneosecularisation. It is hardly surprising that most Bulgarians see the Orthodox Church as asort of “community cult” (in the Weberian sense) linked to the national identity and history
rather than as a Eucharistic religion of salvation. A 2017 study by the Pew Research Centeron religiosity in Orthodox countries found that 22% of those who identify as Orthodox in
Bulgaria do not believe in God, and only 5% attend church on a weekly basis (Pew ResearchCenter 2017). In short, Orthodox Christianity gained presence and visibility as a marker ofnational identity, but it did not produce a substantial impact on the social norms, public

Religions 2022, 13, 359

4 of 12morality and individual behaviour of the people who identify as Orthodox (around 76% of
the population).
Overall, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church displayed an ambiguous attitude toward thepost-communist state. While it enthusiastically embraced the newly emerged opportunities
to re-establish its institutions after 1989, it also sought to occupy a privileged position insociety guaranteed by the state. It continuously accentuated its pivotal role in the nationbuilding process, very much along the lines of the communist regime’s representation of the
Church as a “custodian of Bulgarianness under the Turkish yoke” (the medieval Bulgarian
kingdom was conquered and politically subjected to the Ottoman Empire between 1396
and 1878), and insisted on a strategic recognition and protection of Orthodox Christianity
as the country’s “traditional religion.” In short, the Church sought both freedom from state
control and the state’s protection and support through a preferential legal treatment andallocation of substantial funds5 . However, it ended up being co-opted and controlled by thestate, even though the current regime of control can be described as soft-power favouritism
as opposed to the harsh repressions and instrumentalisation under the communist regime.
While communist secularisation was imposed by the state, neosecularisation developed mostly as a result of the inability of the Church to overcome its spiritual stagnationand to formulate a prophetic critique of the neoliberal market globalisation and its devastating effects on considerable sections of the population, let alone to offer a moral alternative
to the individualisation and commodification of societal life. To be sure, neoliberal regimes
worldwide prompted the disappearance of clear boundaries not only between the left andthe right (e.g., both the left and the right used austerity measures to handle the effects of theeconomic crisis post-2008), but also between the religious and the secular (as they co-opted,
governed and transformed all spheres of social life in line with its market rationalities)6 .
3. Religion and the Rise of Anti-Gender Politics in Bulgaria
Gender is a major principle of social, political and cultural organisation, and is therefore an important location for hegemonic struggles. In the observation of Connell, “Genderroles are a major component of social structure as a whole, and gender politics are among
the main determinants of our collective fate” (Connell 2005, p. 76). As I have argued
elsewhere, particularly in times of rapid transformation, “gender roles are propelled to thecenter stage of discursive struggles for the reinterpretation and redefinition of social norms
and frames of reference” (Merdjanova 2013, p. 82). Importantly, debates on gender andsexualities have been a continuous source of controversy for gender-conservative religions,both Christian and non-Christian. Specifically, in Eastern Europe, gender-related issues
have been central to the Orthodox and Catholic Churches’ negotiation of their place insociety, as those Churches have sought to establish their teachings of gender and sexuality
as social and legal norms.
The past decade saw a rise of anti-gender campaigns across Eastern Europe, which
mirrored developments worldwide. Terms such as “anti-genderism” and “anti-gendermovement” entered the public vocabulary to describe a broad ideological and politicalmobilisation against gender equality, women’s rights and emancipation, sexual and reproductive rights.
Generally, women’s rights have been a work in progress, constantly renegotiated andredefined in a search to translate international norms into national practices by embedding
those norms in specific cultural and political contexts. As gender equality norms andpolicies challenge and seek to reshape existing gender orders, they are invariably met withresistance both by conservative religious groups and illiberal nationalists. The anti-gendercamp is ideologically and socially diverse, but its constituencies share views of men andwomen as having different and complementary roles in the family and in the public sphere,
and of heterosexual marriage as a sacred or a secular-nationalist norm.
With David Paternotte, anti-genderism is genealogically tied to the Vatican’s portrayalof “gender” and “gender ideology” as a strategy used by feminists and homosexual activists
to destabilise the “natural family.” It emerged in the wake of the 1994 Cairo ConferenceReligions 2022, 13, 359

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on Population and Development and the 1995 World Conference on Women, and grew
exponentially thereafter (see Paternotte 2015). From a central trope in the Vatican’s counterreaction to the recognition of sexual and reproductive rights in the UN system, the notionsof gender and gender ideology gradually evolved into an ideologically malleable rhetoricaland discursive tool for anti-gender mobilisation around the world.
Despite its anti-Catholicism and anti-ecumenism, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church,arguably through its closed ties with the Russian Orthodox Church and under the influenceof far-right nationalists, bought into a discursive strategy that originated in the Catholic
struggles with feminism and gender equality, and has been extensively promoted by the
Christian Right, particularly the evangelicals in the United States. In 2018, ecclesiastics,
theologians, Orthodox-affiliated NGOs and online platforms formed open or covert alliances with local evangelical groups and far-right nationalists to lobby against government
plans to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violenceagainst women and domestic violence, also known as the Istanbul Convention. The loose
anti-gender camp launched attacks on an alleged plot by the West to impose, throughthe notion of “gender” used in the convention, a “third gender” in society, to sexualisechildren with sex education in schools, and to destroy both the family as an institution
and the traditional values and norms in Bulgarian society. They succeeded in blocking
the ratification, despite efforts by liberal intellectuals, human rights defenders, feminist
academics and NGOs to oppose the spreading of misinformation and blatant propaganda,
and to focus on the document’s aim to prevent and reduce violence against women (seeMerdjanova 2021, pp. 67–68).
In 2019, the draft National Strategy for the Child 2019–2030 (the Strategy) replaced the
Istanbul Convention as a target of heated debates and a hostage of fake news and deliberateslander7 . Various parents’ associations, both recently registered NGOs and unofficial
Facebook groups, led mostly by right-wing nationalists and evangelical activists, organised
public meetings, protests, and media campaigns against the Strategy. Three theologians
from Veliko Turnovo University wrote a letter to the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox
Church calling it to take action against the Strategy. Consequently, the Synod issued an
official statement claiming that parents have the right to slap their children in order todiscipline them. After a public outcry, the Synod retracted its statement and came up witha more subtle position defending the children and their rights “from the moment of theirconception,” the rights of parents, and the “traditional values” of the Bulgarian nation8 .
Alongside the Strategy, a new Social Services Act scheduled to come in force in January
2020 became a target of manipulative campaigns by the anti-gender camp. The campaigners
claimed that the Act endangers the family, the rights and freedoms of Bulgarians, andthe national sovereignty by providing funds to greedy and evil NGOs to perform social
services. The Holy Synod requested the deferral of the Act under the pretext that private
NGOs might overtake the functions of the state. The Synod averred that the Act curtails
parents’ rights, denies the connection between parents and children, and creates a precedent
for unlawful intervention in the family. Rumors spread among the Roma population thatsocial workers will be paid to take kids away from their familes; this caused panic andled to the withdrawal of Roma children from the schools by their parents. According tosome reports, certain evangelical Churches, which attract large numbers of Roma people,
were instrumental in spreading those rumors9 . Consequently, the Act was thwarted, tothe detriment of many people in need who were supposed to receive improved and moreaccessible social support. It underwent significant revisions before coming into power inAugust 2020.
It can be argued that in the context of increasing neosecularisation since the early
2000s, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church grew both apprehensive of its declining authority
and anxious about its continuous feminisation as women remained an absolute majority
in its parish life. To counter those, the Church both reaffirmed masculine dominationin the religious sphere and aligned with a gendered nationalism, restating its teachings
about “natural differences” between the sexes, the discourse of “traditional values”, andReligions 2022, 13, 359

6 of 12the validation of women exclusively as mothers. It saw an opportunity during the debateson the Istanbul Convention and later on the Strategy and the Social Services Act to publicly
reemphasise its gender-conservative positions and bolster its social impact, after several
failed attempts to do so (e.g., its unsuccessful campaigns to introduce religious educationin public schools and to influence the abortion and reproductive rights legislation).
Anti-gender politics, however, are not simply a consequence of an alleged strategyof the Orthodox Church to counter neosecularisation. The Church apparently reacts in avolatile manner to selected social and political issues rather than following a consistent
strategy. For example, Church hierarchs publicly expressed support for the Istanbul
Convention prior to the government’s signature of the document in 201610 . However,
the ecclesiastics changed their position when the state moved to ratifying the convention
in 2018. They aligned with the far-right nationalist party IMRO—Bulgarian National
Movement in the coalition government, which strongly opposed the document. At thesame time, various evangelical actors and pressure groups were exceedingly active inassembling and coordinating a broader anti-gender camp. It did not take long for the newly
emerged network to begin attacking gender equality activists and NGOs as well as feminist
academics and gender studies programs, even though those programs are very few andnot particularly visible.
To be sure, in addition to local religious and nationalist conservative actors andpressure groups, transnational connections and flows of funding, ideas, and strategies
form key dimensions of anti-gender movements worldwide. Research on the ground has
revealed that since 2007, Christian Right groups from the United States have spent USD 280
million globally—USD 90 million in Europe alone—to support and spread conservativevalues and programs in public matters. Leading organisations in the European spending
are the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) through its branch the European
Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ), and the Alliance Defending Freedom Intl. (ADF), bothof which focus on large-scale legal cases defending conservative social policies in various
European countries (Provost and Archer 2020). By establishing European networks andheadquarters in Brussels and Strasbourg to target EU institutions, those organisations seek
to coordinate and create a pan-European anti-gender movement as part of a growing global
movement (Paternotte and Kuhar 2017, pp. 270–71).
According to a 2018 report by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, the campaign against the Istanbul Convention in Bulgaria was organised
by local actors supported by Vienna-based European branch of ADF11 . ADF seems to beconnected with the evangelical-affiliated Foundation “Preobrazhenie” (“Transformation),established in 2002 and running a wide range of activities, spanning from a publishingprogram, to legal advocacy, to a web portal “Svoboda za vseki” (“Freedom for everyone”)12 .
The group claims that its goal is to “defend the values of traditional family.” After its
campaign against the Istanbul Convention, it denounced the National Strategy for theChild 2019–2030 as a “fruit of totalitarian thinking” and lobbied against the adoption of a
new Social Services Act, under the pretext that the latter would marginalise the role of theparents and would allow disproportional intervention by the state in family life.
In October 2020, the “Freedom for everyone” portal published an open letter in
response to a recent Resolution by the Commission on civil liberties, justice, and internalaffairs of the European Parliament (LIBE) asking Bulgaria to reconsider its rejection of
the Istanbul Convention. The letter was addressed to the Constitutional Court, Parents
and Civil Association, Independent and Central Media, the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian
Orthodox Church, evangelical Churches, and other faiths, and called on the Bulgarianauthorities “to confirm their position regarding the Istanbul Convention and to support
Poland’s effort to exit the Convention.” It was co-signed by “Freedom for everyone” and“ROD Intl.”, and supported by several associations: “March for the family”, “Society
and Values”, “Unity for the Family and Children”, Association for Home Schooling, the“Light in the Balkans” foundation, and the Christian-Reformist Party13 . It appears that theorganisations that initiated and supported the letter are all evangelical-affiliated.

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The anti-gender alignment of the Orthodox Church is embedded in the ecclesiasticalsupport for conservative social norms and gender-distinct roles in the church, the family,
and in the job market. The post-1989 reassertion of male domination in the Church mapped
onto a rising masculine nationalism and an increasing focus on “traditional” gender roles,
which typically imply male leadership and female domesticity. Importantly, as I haveargued elsewhere, the Church has continuously used “traditional values” synonymouslywith patriarchal social and family norms (strictly defined gender differences and roles, adivinely ordained male–female hierarchy) in an ongoing effort to reframe patriarchal orderas tradition (Merdjanova 2021, p. 67).
It is hardly surprising that the Orthodox theologians who joined anti-gender debatesrecycled obsolete arguments with little relevance to contemporary society. Particularly,
issues related to women’s emancipation and gender equality have been continuously
reduced to outdated platitudes presented as theological truths. To illustrate my point, here
is an example from Lectures on Religion, published in 1992 and written by two of the leading
theological professors at the time, which used to be a mandatory reading for theologicalstudents. The lengthy excerpt below is taken from the section on emancipation:
In the last decades, emancipation has been successfully developed and practicallyinstilled in the family and society. Without clarifying the erroneous principles, on
which it has been grounded, we will briefly describe the image of the emancipatedwoman. What did woman gain when she adopted the fallacious teaching of
emancipation and gave herself to dreams of glory and social fame?
Women themselves neither created nor introduced emancipation in our society;they learned it from authors, who efficiently spread it through stories and novels
as well as through multiple other means. Unfortunately for us all, women did
not get anything good from emancipation, yet the behavior of many of themconfirmed an ancient truth: those who exalt themselves, will be humiliated [. . . ].
Inspired by emancipation, women strove to become equal with men. Someof them began to despise the behavior of the ‘ordinary’ woman, and turned
their backs to their main duty, rushing into the realm of public affairs. Theirachievements in this sphere gradually weakened their womanhood. Without
noticing, they purposefully sought to become men.
And because a woman can never cease to be a woman, she transformed into asemi-woman-semi-man, without acquiring the natural characteristics of a man. In
their new standing, women harbored animosity towards the Christian teaching ofmarriage, rejected the words of St Paul the Apostle: ‘Wives, submit to your own
husbands, as to the Lord; husbands, love your wives’ (Ephesians 5: 22–25) . . .
and rushed to acquire unconditional independence from the men [. . . ].
Emancipation perplexed the woman; she succumbed to a state of homelessness
and felt like a flower, which had been plucked from its natural environmentand could not be planted anywhere. In her alleged advancement and imagined
freedom, the woman began to long for a quiet life away from people’s eyes andfor the fulfillment of her duty within the borders of her home and amidst her
family. Today, thousands of women in Bulgaria do not wish to be emancipated,
to walk shoulder to shoulder with men, and to overtake men’s tasks. They wish
to be liked, respected and loved as true girlfriends, wives and mothers.
They understand clearly that the woman fulfills with dignity her duty in society
only when she is a true woman.14
This kind of ludicrous theological writing by men explaining the “nature” and duties ofwomen was recently replaced by efforts to introduce the public to the “dangers” of “gender
ideology.” In 2019, the Orthodox Christian publishing house “Omophor” published andpublicised widely the Bulgarian translation of the book The Global Sexual Revolution: theDestruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom by German Catholic author Gabriele Kuby.

Religions 2022, 13, 359

8 of 12The book was written in 2012 and subsequently translated into several languages. Before
arriving in Bulgaria, it gained popularity in other East European countries, which, according
to Kuby, were quicker to discern the new global totalitarian “gender ideology” because of
their experience with communism. “Gender ideology,” Kuby kept surmising in her tirelesspublic appearances around Europe, including during the launch of her book in Bulgaria, is“a totalitarian ideology more dangerous than fascism and communism.”
In her speech in Sofia in October 2019, Kuby called on men to be soldiers and to defend
women from the new totalitarianism that conquers the world so that women can fulfill
their primary roles as mothers. She vilified feminism for “taking away the powers of themen” and went as far as to compare the new Bulgarian Strategy for the Child to the muchloathed Ottoman practice of forcibly recruiting soldiers among Christian children in the
Balkans. Kuby complained of being “attacked by forces which do not leave us a possibility
to express our opinion” and occasionally surmised, “I can be detained for what I just toldyou”, in an obvious attempt to portray herself as a candidate for martyrdom in the nameof her persecuted “truth.” Her speech was often interrupted by ovations from the overly
enthusiastic public. In conclusion, she asserted that “Europe is awakening, we have newconservative governments, Christians are awakening . . . We will win, because God, natureand our simple rationality are with us.”15
Despite Kuby’s posturing as a sociologist, her writings comprise a mixture of pseudosociological musing, tendentiously picked and interpreted “facts,” fear-mongering, andwishful thinking rather than a compelling sociological analysis. They, however, speak to,
and further excite, people’s moral angst, real grievances, and need for easy explanatory
frameworks in a world that has become too complex, unpredictable, and precarious. Indeed, Kuby has played a significant role in the escalating anti-gender discourses across
Eastern Europe.
By circulating misleading claims about a ubiquitous “gender ideology” (as thoughgender ideology exists as a single theory) which aims to overturn the “natural” male–female
polarity and hierarchical order through policies of “gender mainstreaming,” anti-gender
campaigns fuel negative sentiments against feminist advocates, human rights NGOs,
liberal intellectuals, migrants, and sexual and other minorities. They deflect social attention
from important concerns such as endemic corruption, rising poverty, and political andinstitutional dysfunction. The fear-mongering around “gender” touches upon real social
grievances and thus falls on a receptive ear. With its skewed explanations, it fuels dangerous
culture wars and promotes identity politics that impede struggles for economic and social
justice, welfare provisions, equal rights, and inclusive citizenship for all. The scarecrowsof “sexual revolution” and “gender mainstreaming” serve to mask and mystify the root
causes of Bulgaria’s social malaise. Emotionally charged references to “the family,” “thechildren,” and “the nation under threat” give to the large disenfranchised sections of the
population a way to express their discontent and anger.
On 26 October 2021, the Constitutional Court announced its conclusion that “according to the Constitution, the notion ‘gender’ is to be understood solely in its biologicalmeaning,” obviously seeking to put an end to social-constructivist interpretations of theterm. Importantly, before making its decision, the Court asked the Holy Synod and otherreligious denominations to express their position on the issue. This gave the ecclesiastics anopportunity to reiterate that any understanding of “gender” beyond a biological meaning
is “incompatible with the Bulgarian social order . . . and would introduce ideas, which areirreconcilable with the fundamental moral values and faith of the holy Orthodox Church”,
as well as to emphasise that “Orthodoxy is part of the national and constitutional identityof Bulgaria.”16 The Constitutional Court asking denominational leaders for their opinion
before taking a decision on a certain issue can be read as a sign of an increasing symbolic
appropriation of religion for political means.

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4. Conclusions
Admittedly, anti-gender movements are political rather than religious formations,even though religious actors and ideologies typically play a prominent role in their emergence and mobilisation. These movements are heterogeneous and include diverse actors,
agencies, and power interests, which use gender as an umbrella term for their agenda
setting, or, metaphorically speaking, as a “symbolic glue” (Grzebalska et al. 2017). Theiremotional appeal to large sections of the population is embedded in an eclectic anti-colonial
discourse which combines rhetoric of both victimhood and cultural superiority with genderconservatism and critique of neoliberalism and globalisation (Korolczuk and Graff 2018).
Importantly, as Korolczuk and Graff have argued, anti-genderism is not simply a continuation of earlier anti-feminist fights; it is rather a new ideological and political configuration,
both transnational and local, which has a great emotional force and serves as the new
language of illiberal, populist, anti-capitalist mobilisation (Korolczuk and Graff 2018). In
Bulgaria, and in Eastern Europe more generally, it can be seen as a protest movement
against the ills of the post-communist transition, which, under the garb of democratisation,
incorporated the region into the global market economy at excruciating social costs.
Therefore, explaining anti-gender mobilisation merely as a religious backlash or culture war is a culturalisation of what is de facto political and economic. The rise of antigender politics is tied to the failures of the liberals and social democrats to deliver the socialand economic justice they once promised, to the rise of gender-conservative nationalism,
and to the general weakness of the feminist movements in this part of the world. It is partof a larger illiberal populist mobilisation, in which a misinterpreted and misrepresented
notion of gender plays a central role, and which has created a space for people to express
their grievances, angers, and fears, and to claim a sense of agency. In the observation of
Eszter Kováts, the so-called progressive side has staunchly abided by the “human rights
consensus,” disconnecting itself from the problems and concerns of the many, which has
generated antagonistic resistance (Kováts 2018a). It is crucial to engage with the root
causes of the right-wing mobilisation against “gender” in Eastern Europe and to discuss
the embeddedness of gender-related issues in the power relations and inequalities with
the West/the EU, which have been instrumentalised by the Right in their “freedom fight”(Kováts 2021).
Importantly, the meanings and usages of “gender” have multiplied in recent years:
from being used synonymously with biological sex, to signifying socially constructed roles
imposed on men and women, to being the equivalent of gender identity, all of which
generates confusion, which the right-wingers have been quick to politicise (Kováts 2018b).
Last but not least, the treatment of queer understanding of gender in Western academia
and activism as a globally relevant and agreed upon consensus has further exacerbatedantagonistic resistance in Eastern Europe (Kováts 2020). Feminist activists in Bulgaria
complained that the feminist movement has become a hostage to LGBT activism, which
moved the focus from women’s rights more generally to LGBT rights specifically. This happened, I was told, because LGBT organisations had enjoyed stronger international support,
including substantial funds, to promote their agenda while women’s rights organisations
had been chronically underfunded and increasingly marginalised. As Tatyana Kmetova
put it, “There is no gender because gender is everywhere. The focus has been placedon identity at the expense of integrity. We need to bring it back specifically on women’s
rights rather than diluting our struggle by expanding disproportionally the scope of ourpolitics.”17 She thus neatly summarised the replacement of struggles for women’s rights
and gender equality evolving around “gender” as a description of social relations of power,
hierarchy, and domination with a postmodern, nebulous recourse to “gender” understoodas advancement of fluid and ever-multiplying gender identities—all of which plays into
the hands of neoliberal rationalities of fragmentation and technics of governance.
Major instigators in the faith-based sections of the loose anti-gender camp in Bulgaria
appear to be certain evangelical actors and NGOs, which were consequently joined by
the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. During anti-gender campaigns, evangelicals consistently

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downplayed denominational differences by emphasising their Christian identity and reiterating their concerns about the “traditional family values” and the “interests/securityof the Bulgarian nation,” while benefiting from the support of international Christian
Right organisations and alliances, and from better organisational skills. After the blockingof the Istanbul Convention in 2018, the anti-gender camp expanded its base, strategies,
and targets, and obstructed the adoption of the new Strategy for the Child and the Social
Service Act. In December 2020, Bulgaria joined Poland and Hungary in opposing theEU’s new Action Plan on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in External Action
2021–2025.18
In Bulgaria, gender has become an arena for the rehearsal of different notions ofchurch–state and church–society relations and for the renegotiation of the boundaries
between the secular and the religious, in addition to serving as a larger battleground for thecompeting ideological practices of illiberal populism and liberal democracy. Clearly, therise of anti-gender politics is a local manifestation of a global rise of fundamentalist, nativist
forces and far-right politics, both secular and religious, which seek to impose control oversociety against the backdrop of liberal democracy’s crisis. It is interlinked with the riseof militant masculinities as a result of destabilised patriarchal regimes by the increasing
visibility and successful performance of women in all spheres of life. Conservative religions
and masculinist nationalisms have joined forces to oppose women’s rights, to reaffirm
conservative societal views of gender-specific roles, and to reverse gender justice.
Funding: The article was researched and written during my 2021 fellowship at the Multiple Secularities Research Group of the University of Leipzig.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.
Acknowledgments: This article draws on a Working Paper completed in the framework of the
University of Leipzig’s Multiple Secularities Research Programme. I am grateful to the staff and myco-fellows for their warm hospitality and excellent research environment. The ideas developed in thearticle were inspired by my participation as Senior Fellow in the “Orthodoxy and Human Rights”
project, sponsored by Fordham University’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center and funded by theHenry Luce Foundation and Leadership 100.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.

Notes
1

This paragraph draws on sections in (Merdjanova 2021, p. 52).

2

For interpretations of nationalism as a political religion, see (Merdjanova 2002, pp. 71–78).

3

For a detailed discussion of neo-secularisation as a sociological paradigm, see (Malesevic 2010).

4

These views were expressed during a session of the Bulgarian National Television’s weekly programme “Vyara i obshtestvo”[Faith and Society] on 6 June 2020, https://bnt.bg/bg/a/shchedrostta-na-drzhavata-km-bpts-sled-pandemiyata (accessed on 20
November 2021). It is worth mentioning that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church refused to send participants to the program since2014, as it considered it too critical. Soon after this session, the whole programme was discontinued.

5This has been a common trend for the historical Churches in Eastern Europe, which expected from the post-communist state
to regulate the religious domain by limiting religious pluralism and privileging the traditional denominations; they frequently
framed those demands in terms of compensation for their pre-1989 state repression.

6

The topic of neoliberalism and its effects on the historical Churches in Eastern Europe deserves a special analysis, which is beyond
the scope of this paper. Suffice to say, much of what the Orthodox and Catholic ecclesiastics started to promote post-1989 fits into
the neoliberal economic and political agenda and its attendant rationalities. For instance, the Churches’ focus on the family andtraditional gender roles is in line with the state’s withdrawal from the public services sector and the growing need of private
care services for the children and for the elderly which are currently being provided exclusively by the free labour of femalefamily members.

7

About the controversies around the Strategy, see “Child Rights Under Attack in Bulgaria”, 2 September 2019, on the website of
the National Network for Children, https://nmd.bg/en/child-rights-under-attack-in-bulgaria/ (accessed on 29 October 2021).

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The statement (in Bulgarian) can be found at the website of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church: https://old.bgpatriarshia.bg/m/news.php?id=286900 (accessed on 3 September 2021).

9

See the video “Кoи сa хoрaтa, кoитo пoдклaждaт стрaхoвете зa Бaрневерне” [“Who are the people who fuel fears ofBarneverne”] by investigative journalist Genka Shikerova (in Bulgarian) https://offnews.bg/razsledvane/koi-sa-horata-koitopodklazhdat-strahovete-za-barneverne-video-720338.html (accessed on 20 May 2021).

10“БΠЦ се включи в oбсъждaнетo нa прoблемa зa нaсилиетo срещу жени” [The Bulgarian Orthodox Church participated in
the discussions of the problem of the violence against women], 25 November 2015, https://dveri.bg/component/com_content/
Itemid,100723/catid,14/id,21710/view,article/ (accessed on 18 October 2021).
“Кoй инструктирa и кooрдинирa кaмпaниите зa ‘трaдициoнните ценнoсти’ в Еврoпa” [Who instructs and coordinates thecampaigns for “traditional values” in Europe”, Marginalia, 13 June 2019, https://www.marginalia.bg/aktsent/koj-instruktira-ikoordinira-kampaniite-za-traditsionnite-tsennosti-v-evropa/ (accessed on 23 July 2021).

1112

Here is a link to the website “Freedom for everyone” (in Bulgarian): https://svobodazavseki.com (accessed on 16 March 2022).

13“Πризив срещу aспекти нa Резoлюция нa Кoмисия нa Еврoпейския пaрлaмент и зa пoдкрепa нa Републикa Πoлшa”[A call against aspects of the Resolution of the European Parliament and in support of the Republic of Poland], 9 October
2020, https://svobodazavseki.com/blog/item/386-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%B2-%D1%81%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%89%D1%83-%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B8-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8E%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82-%D0%B8-%D0%B7%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BF%D0%B0-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BF%D1%83%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%88%D0%B0.html (accessed on 25 October 2021).
Никoлaй Шивaрoв и Димитър Кирoв, Беседи пo религия (1992), 111–13 (my translation from Bulgarian). According to its
preface, the book had been planned as a textbook in religion for high school students, but had to downsize after the Church’s
proposal for the introduction of religious classes in schools were thwarted. However, it was part of the reading lists for theologicalstudents until its authors retired.
The 2019 video from the Kuby’s speech on the global sexual revolution in Sofia can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Yh3jkAoB3ic (accessed on 30 September 2021).

14

15

16

17

18

The full text of the stance of the BOC can be found at https://www.pravoslavie.bg/%D0%91%D1%8A%D0%BB%D0%B3\%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F/%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%89%D0%B5-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B4-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B1%D0%BF%D1%86-%D0%B7%D0%B0-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BB/ (accessed on 29 October 2021).
Personal communication with Tatyana Kmetova, executive director of the Center for Women’s Studies and Policies, Sofia, 23
September 2021.
https://agenceurope.eu/en/bulletin/article/12624/33 (accessed on 2 November 2021).

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